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Japanese cake brand, Anime Sugar, has a tradition of releasing Christmas-themed anime cakes every holiday season, and they have announced something huge for one of this year’s biggest and most popular TV anime, Re:Zero. For their Re:Zero campaign, they are not only offering some cake, but also a special Re:Zero non-alcoholic champaigne, and a dakimakura featuring...

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A hacker has turned the latest SimCity game by Electronic Arts into a single-player game, disproving claims by the developer that the game required an internet connection to work.

A hacker has turned the latest SimCity game by Electronic Arts into a single-player game, disproving claims by the developer that the game required an internet connection to work.

The hacker, who goes by the name AzzerUK, was able to alter the game's code to turn off a feature that periodically checked if the user was online, disconnecting them if they were not logged in.

The result is an almost perfect single-player game, although the one drawback is that cities cannot be saved to a local machine, but must be downloaded from the EA servers. He suggested this could also be changed if more “serious work and ingenuity” was applied.

The SimCity launch did not go quite as smoothly as expected

The internet requirement of the game, which launched on 5 March, caused extensive problems for many users, with some unable to connect, others having to wait 30 minutes to get in, and those who were able to play experiencing server lag and numerous bugs.

The problems prompted EA to apologise for what it described as a “dumb” approach to the game's launch. It added new servers to deal with the volume of players and is offering a free game to everyone affected.

“Always on” games are a growing phenomenon, designed primarily to deal with game piracy. Blizzard's Diablo III also experienced launch issues. Eventually these games are hacked and pirated like any other, and often attempts to hinder pirates end up hindering genuine customers instead.